Simple Homemaking and Happy Mothering

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Category Archives: homemaking

When you’re in the mood for something sweet, chocolatey, and easy to make, this recipe is for you. It combines the all-too-famous delicacy of the brownie with the simplicity of a basic cookie recipe. These cookies are slightly crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. They’re dark and delectable.

I did some experimenting (with the help of my baker-extraordinaire toddler) and came up with a yummy combination. These cookies can be ready for munching in about 17 minutes (or less) and the recipe only uses six ingredients.

They’re an appropriate choice for the chocolate lover, the cookie lover, the sweets lover, and the baking lover. So… to cut to the chase, here is the recipe!

Easy Brownie Cookie Recipe

Yield: about 15 cookies

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/2 stick of salted butter

1/3 cup of coconut oil

2/3 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of cocoa powder

7/8 cup of flour

Directions:

Melt the butter and coconut oil. I just put both ingredients in a bowl and microwaved them for a little bit.

Add in the egg and mix. The egg does not need to be well beat.

Add in the remaining ingredients and combine. The batter will be thick and will resemble brownie batter.

Drop spoonful size amounts of batter onto a non-stick cookie sheet. (You can also lay down aluminum foil on your cookie sheet). The size of the drops of batter will be about one and a half inches in diameter.

Sprinkle a little bit of white sugar on top of each cookie.

Bake the cookies at 370 degrees for 8 minutes 30 seconds.

Enjoy these delectable chocolate creations with your favorite little bakers and a fresh glass of milk.

Once our children arrived, I knew I wanted the cleaning supplies cupboard to reflect that personality trait. So, I set out every bottle, jug, and cleaning supply I had on my kitchen countertop and weeded down my stash to just three items. I’ve been using only three items for a few years now, and I haven’t needed anything else. Here are the only three cleaning supplies I keep in my home.

Three Handy Cleaning Supplies for a Minimalist Cleaning Cupboard

Bleach. It’s kind of hard to do without bleach, as it comes in handy for laundry and tough stains. It helps to super-sanitize stinky dish rags and towels and helps reverse messes from potty accidents and other mishaps.

All-purpose cleaner. I use my all-purpose cleaner on my floors, in my sinks, and in my toilet bowls. It’s a very useful item whenever something needs to be disinfected or when an appliance could use a thorough, deep cleaning.

Glass-cleaner. This iconic blue spray-bottle cleaner is just… nice. Wiping smudges from windows, refreshing mirrors, or giving the glass oven-top a quick wipe down is so easy when you can apply a few squirts and wipe the grime away.

That’s it! Keeping my cleaning supplies minimal saves me money and saves me space. I store these three items up high where the kids cannot reach them. The only things that live in the cupboard under my kitchen sink are cleaning rags, a sponge or two, and some brown paper bags (you never know when you might need one, I guess).

If you are feeling overwhelmed by how cluttered your cleaning supplies cupboard has gotten, try weeding down. It’s nice to know that you can keep your home clean with only a few things on hand!

Making the home is plain ol’ fun. Many moms enjoy “feathering their nest” by arranging the furniture and decorating each room. But when there are little feet stomping around and busy fingers that want to get into everything, it’s pretty much impossible to create that Pinterest-perfect home design look.

I’ve come to accept the sight of my home decorated with scattered toys, dropped books, toilet paper pyramids, and breakfast crumbs. That’s just life. But I’ve also found a way to enjoy decorating my home while keeping things practical for the little ones, too. Here are a few ideas.

Keep things simple. The fewer of your precious items that are out and about, the less your kids will be temped to tamper with them. I love my vintage fan. By placing in the back corner of my antique corner table, the little ones can’t reach it. (That way I get to look at it and they can’t touch it).

Include kiddie items as a part of your furniture arrangement. This little bookshelf looks cute and is easily accessible for the kids.

Decorate with your children’s art. Believe it or not, that painting was created by my toddler. I simply put it in a nice frame, and bingo! It looks like a statement piece.

Here is another way to decorate with kids: combine one of your favorite items with theirs. This is my antique school desk used as a toy station. Inside the cubby are puzzles and search books. (By the way, don’t be fooled. My house is never clean. I picked up right before I took these pictures).

These are just a few ideas. Everyone has a completely unique decorating and homemaking style. Find what works for you and your kids. Happy homemaking!

Have you noticed the price of window treatments lately? I couldn’t believe how costly some fabric and a few metal parts could be as I was researching what kind of shade to buy for our living room windows. There was just no way I could spend that kind of money on curtains. I got frustrated and gave up looking; time to try something else!

What I landed on was a combo of purchasing some inexpensive curtains and morphing them into shades. They turned out great and are very practical, so I thought I would share what I did.

You will only need three main things:

some kind of fabric

some kind of tension rod

something to seal hems

First, material. We needed something thick that would suppress the sun’s heat. So, instead of buying yards and yards of fabric (which would have cost me a good chunk of change), I purchased a thick sun-blocking curtain from walmart.com. At $7 per curtain, these cost a lot less than if I had purchased a ton of fabric.

Next, tension rod. My husband found some thick wooden dowels at a thrift store and we used those to hang the shades. There were no nails or screws necessary; we simply sawed the dowels to the exact width of the window, stuck a felt pad on each end, and shoved them into place. So the dowels’ own tension is what is keeping the shades in place.

Third, sealing hems. I cut each curtain to the size of my windows and sealed the hems with stitch witchery (no sewing at all!). Since the length of the curtains I purchased was already to size, I only had to cut along one side of the fabric in order to make it the size I needed. Then I simply sealed the cut line with stitch witchery.

Lastly, hang them up and enjoy!

I’m still working on a method for rolling up the shades. Currently, I’m just literally rolling them up by hand and then jamming the fabric in between the window jams (ha). What I will do eventually is attach a thin dowel at the very bottom of each shade and stick a tiny felt pad on each end. That way, when I roll up the shades I have a better way of keeping the roll in place (again, the dowel’s tension will keep things in place).

That’s it! No cords, strings, nails, screws, grommets, or boning. Just fabric, stitch witchery, and dowels. I completed five window shades in about two hours, so it wasn’t terribly time consuming, either.

These shades look stylish, cost me little, and were super easy to make. You can make shades like these with any fabric of your choosing. If you need some shades on a tight budget, give these a try!

The tops of kitchen cabinets just seem to shout “decorate me.” Leaving them empty is a completely acceptable option, of course. But since they provide a super tall, lengthy space, it’s a great location to showcase some of your favorite items. Your kids won’t bother them, and you can enjoy looking at your stuff.

Don’t worry about making the perfect arrangement and don’t think about how often you should dust it. (I have yet to dust mine and I’ve been in my new home almost a year). Instead, find items you love and have fun placing them. Try different arrangements.

I like antiques and vintage items. Here is the arrangement I finally settled on in my kitchen.

I do have one tip: if you have a collection of similar items, keep them together. See my little cluster of blue mason jars and my line-up of cream pitchers? They look best when they’re placed together. I tried different arrangements where I had some pitchers here, a jar and another item there, a wacky combo over there. It just looked kind of disorganized. Keeping similar items together gives your cabinet-top an organized, yet interesting appeal.

I am by no means a good decorator, but I sure had a lot of fun. Take time to set up your home, and enjoy the process. Enjoy showcasing your favorite possessions. As you take care of your daily mommy tasks, spend a brief millisecond smiling at your cabinet-top display delighting in your homemaking skills! Sometimes, it’s just these little things that help get us through the day.